as I live a few more questions

"Africa" As You've Never Heard It

Prepare to have your mind blown by what a choir can do.  This is a cappella at its finest, folks.

Making Jack Twist in Second Life: A New Possibility for Brokeback Mountain Fanart and Illustrating BBM Fan Fiction.

I've been percolating the idea for some time now to combine my love of Brokeback Mountain slash fiction with my  enjoyment of the virtual reality of Second Life (SL).  So this weekend I worked on creating a Second Life avatar (i.e. in-world character) based on Jack Twist, as played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

It was actually fairly easy to do (well, OK, maybe not so easy for the average SL newcomer who may still be wandering around bumping into things...estimates are that as many as 90% of people who join SL eventually give up due the steep learning curve).  First step was to create a "blank" avatar and outfit him with modifiable (tintable, etc.) skin.  Second Step was selecting a suitable full-face "passport photo" of Jake Gyllenhaal from iheartjackmedia.com Then I trotted said avatar over to a place called Avatar Island and went through the (relatively) simple process of creating a "face tattoo" which the blank avatar will wear:

You can preview the created head tattoo in 3D, rotating in order to see all its angels before committing to have it made:

Once we have our face, we need to add realistic-looking cerulean blue eyes, which means a SL shopping trip :-) I picked out this highly photo-realistic pair from Skye Eyes:

Now comes the hardest part: tweaking the innumerable parameters to make the face look more like Jake Gyllenhaal's. This is painstaking work which took me quite some time, and much tweaking of various features, length of nose, width of eyes, etc. etc.:

Now we have our Jake head, which I think compares favourably with the original :-)

Now, stick on some hair and presto!  Jake Gyllenhaal, the actor who played Jack Twist in the movie Brokeback Mountain:




But of course, we can't stop there!  It's time to shop for some clothing and a black cowboy hat...


Hmm, maybe that hat is a little TOO big.  Good thing we can adjust it to fit. 

And we follow the same process outlined above for Ennis Del Mar.  This avatar still needs some tweaking (I still think that the face is a little too narrow; the avatar looks okay only from certain angles):



But don't stop at clothing, there is the ultimate cowboy necessity: horses.  The horses from McLean Ranch in Second Life are the ultimate in realism and animation, so I gifted both Jack and Ennis with stallions. I mean, what good are cowboys without horses?


And I now have "actors" who can (with a little PhotoShopping) "act" out scenes from just about any Brokeback Mountain fantasy you can think of.  Jack and Ennis as corporate lawyers?  Jack and Ennis as astronauts?  Pirates?  Priests?  Scottish farmers?  Any slash fiction you can come up with, can be recreated in 3D.  It can be done!  Here are a few sample "photos" (note that we can also do video on SL, which is called "machinima").

Starry, Starry Night

Sometimes, Second Life can be pretty pointless.

But sometimes, it can simply take your breath away. 

The Art of Ron Mueck

This sculptor's work will be on display in the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa, starting in March.  I'd like to go see his works in person. (Note: Video requires Adobe Flash Player)

Click To Play (Requires Adobe Flash Player)

The following video was filmed during Ron Mueck's residency at The National Gallery, London. The exhibition Ron Mueck was on view at the Brooklyn Museum, November 3, 2006–February 4, 2007. Video courtesy of The National Gallery, London. This video contains some representational nudity. Adult discretion is advised.

Donald Trump Sputters and Spouts

In the current war of words between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump, The Donald's latest salvo is:

"If you talk to Rosie for a little while, she's crude, she's tough, she's arrogant, she's pushy, she's disgusting."

Uhh, Don, you're proving my point that often, that which most irritates you about other people, are qualities that you yourself have.  Let's do a quick run-through, shall we?  Hmmm... Crude, tough, arrogant, pushy, disgusting.  Check, check, check, check, checkeroo, Don.  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Oh, and just for the record, Mr. Trump?  Rosie may have her moments as a blowhard, but at least she's not pretending to be anything other that who she is.  You've become a walking caricature of yourself, as full of himself as Star Jones ever was, and if I see one more media picture of you with your over-Botoxed wife #3 pushing that gilded baby carriage around, I think I'm gonna throw something at my TV set.   

I'm with Barbara Walters on this one; I'm taking Rosie's side.  Replacing Star Jones with Rosie O'Donnell was the best move they ever could have made to revitalize The View. 
 

Boxing Day Musical Interlude: Many Gifts 2006

As promised earlier, links to the music pieces performed by the Rainbow Harmony Project at our 2006 holiday concert are here:

• • Many Gifts Part 1
  • Many Gifts Part 2

Note: These pages may take several minutes to load.  All music files require the QuickTime web browser plug-in, available here. 

For those of you lucky enough not to have to work retail today (and smart enough not to stand in line all morning at some electronics store waiting for the doors to open), grab some of that leftover eggnog or mulled wine, kick back, and enjoy. 

Christmas A Century Ago: from the Children's Book Illustrators Gallery

This illustration is by Charles Robinson, from the first edition of The Child's Christmas, a book published by Blackie press in 1906, exactly a century ago.  This is one of over 2,000 images lovingly scanned and preserved online by Minh Lai, showcasing the work of classic children's book illustrators from the early  twentieth century.

To see the whole gallery, go to the nocloo.com - Children's Book Illustrators website, and click on the Gallery tab.  Be prepared to spend an hour or two browsing through the wonderful work on display, though.  You've been forewarned, now...

Two more images, these by illustrator Kay Nielsen, created for the 1913 book In Powder and Crinoline, Old Fairy Tales Retold (click on the image for a larger size view):

 

See also the images on this website, which contains larger-resolution scans of many of the books from the same collection.  There is truly some staggeringly beautiful work here.

You're just about as useless as JPEGs to Helen Keller

My new fave "Weird Al" Yankovic video (dated a bit, but still funny:

"You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser"   LOL

Bianca Ryan wins America's Got Talent! and a million bucks

Well, I'm late with the news, but the 11-year-old girl with the BIG voice has been declared the winner of the reality TV show America's Got Talent!  Good for Bianca, she definitely deserves it.

And, since things move at Internet speed in today's society, she's already got her own website, and a fan site (warning: video loads and runs immediately on entering website; keep your speakers down).

I hope and wish that she still has a chance to be a little girl in the midst of all this hoopla.  She's eleven years old, and has lots of time.  I don't want her to land up like Judy Garland did, or (God forbid) Whitney Houston.  And Jessica Simpson just makes me nauseous.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

For a long time I had wanted to watch Long Day's Journey Into Night.  I finally had my chance when it was on Turner Classic Movies several nights ago, when I "taped" it using the PVR feature in my new desktop PC.

Wow.  I can see why Katharine Hepburn wanted to do this role so badly that she took a pay cut. 

What a haunting portrait of addiction and family dysfunction this play was.  I might actually go do a bit of reading of comment and criticism of Eugene O'Neill's work, now that I've finally seen it.  And I won't erase it from my hard drive, just yet.  I think I want to see it again.